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Since The Birds

A train went past ours breathing,
and bawling, like a drove
of bulls goring
each other
from the inside of a storm cloud,

and no one blinked.

Kept on staring through one another,
out windows.
Deaf.

Beethoven listened
to the nightingale sing,
and the way the cuckoo,
and the quail did,
on long walks.
He used the way they spoke
in his work and loved them very, very much.
It must be the saddest thing in the world
that birdsong was the first thing
he noticed he couldn’t hear.

Sadder than a funeral with the world or no one there;

a cloud of crying moths
dowsing fireflies with tears;

or all the jigsaw puzzles
in every din-less old folks home missing
just one piece.

Another train punched through the long
shadow, sounding like a
a God dying,
and no one flinched, or missed a line in their book.

Like the end of the world,
that’s how it sounds,
the city.

Cars pass with diminishing yells,
like bodies
falling from great heights.

And the streets seem to yawn to fit us in.

Planes boom overhead,
but below they wash dishes,
and fit shoes, bake, and shake hands.
People on board sleep, almost
peacefully,
and their ears pop.

The city sounds like the end of the world,
might be,
and no one thinks
or frets at all.

One day it will truly end
and I don’t suppose anyone will notice,
and charred dead people will just keep walking
and working, and fucking, falling down cracks in the earth,
numb still,
no more broken than now.